


Five Mornings Susan Ivanova Woke Up, Hung Over, And Didn't Regret It Even A Little Bit

by Leyenn



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-16
Updated: 2009-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-03 02:38:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leyenn/pseuds/Leyenn





	Five Mornings Susan Ivanova Woke Up, Hung Over, And Didn't Regret It Even A Little Bit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kangeiko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kangeiko/gifts).



**1.**

She hates waking up when it's dark outside. She especially hates waking up with a hangover when it's dark outside, and most of all, she hates waking up with a hangover knowing it was thoroughly deserved.

This time yesterday morning, she was a perfectly upstanding, clean-as-a-penny-whistle junior officer, quietly winging her way up the ranks, heading for fame, glory and an actual deep space assignment one of these light-years.

Right about now there's a black stain going on her record for the first time, and it's got the ugly black fingerprint of Psi Corps that even Io Station's rather ample reflecting pool couldn't wash off.

Being nothing but philosophical, however, there isn't anything she can do about it now except for perhaps, since it's within reach, finish the bottle.

Besides, the slimy little bastard deserved it.

  


*

  


**2.**

This... is not her bed.

Also, these are not her quarters. One realisation following on, logically, as it were, from the other.

These are someone's quarters that happen to be enviously bigger than her own, in which it might be possible to swing an actual feline rather than just some small form of rodentia. There are two rooms, for a start, if she peaks out the corner of one eye. Maybe even three, if her rather vague memory of a bathroom complete with sink surround is correct. She rather suspects it is, since it's a particularly vivid memory - and not quite the one she would've expected after that much rum, at that. She wonders if... hm, yep, there's the bruise. That could make duty interesting.

Of course, not quite as interesting as the third realisation, which is, logically, following on, as it were, just precisely whose quarters these are.

She peaks out the corner of the other eye just in time to see him start to stare at her, but she has to roll over before he starts to smile. It's infectious; his more than anyone's she's ever met. She grins gamely through the thudding in her left temple.

"I seem to have misplaced my cabin, Commander."

Sheridan chuckles, "Plenty of room here, Lieutenant," and pushes her back down to the bed.

  


*

  


**3.**

_I was never going to trust you,_ she thinks at the shadows. _I was never going to be this person again._

It's three a.m., just after the third nightmare and at the end of the second bottle, and the wolf has settled in for the night.

_I'm sorry,_ she whispers to the darkness, to the empty place in her mind that can never answer her again, and starts to cry.

  


*

  


**4.**

Maybe if she doesn't get out of bed, she thinks. Maybe if she just doesn't get up ever again, the world will go on without her, happily ever after. She has enough sense of her own mortality to be quite certain that she's not _that_ important to the running of the galaxy - her days of that are long, long over.

Right now, that's a thought she quite enjoys.

She's determined that she's not going to call the sickbay for a call-out. It's all actually rather pleasant, this sick feeling in her gut to go along with the empty ache where she's buried her heart. She's not going to call anyone, she's just going to lie right here and imagine the world going on as it does, without her around. The ship will keep moving, empty space to deserted planet to more - oh look, surprise surprise - empty space; the hours and the days will keep ticking by, one after the other after the other, day after day after ordinary, unremarkable, wrenching day.

She ignores the blacked-out day on the calendar and the bleeping messages on her comm, rolls over and basks in the sickness of it all.

  


*

  


**5.**

Delenn couldn't get drunk, but that was all right, because Susan had a lot of skill stored up in that particular area, so when they finally got to it she got soundly plastered for the both of them.

It took two weeks to get around to it - not because it needed to sink in, but just to have the time. Amazing how twenty years still wasn't enough time to put everything in order.

They couldn't do it while Michael was still around, of course, so that put the designated night back by a good nine days, until the call came to say that the biggest company on Mars was falling apart without a man to smoke cigars in the conference room, and he finally shipped out. Stephen went with him, which was a blessing, because Susan had a rule not to break down in front of the same person twice in the same lifetime in case they started worrying too much.

After that it was just the two of them and the records of eight thousand Anla'shok to read through, which - impressively - managed to delay getting her hands on a plentiful supply of good plum vodka by a day and a half.

Then there were the rituals, of course. She purposefully did not touch a drop until those were done with.

On the fifteenth evening, though, she had a quiet word in the bone with both the house guards, locked every door except the balcony, turned off the comm, and sat down on the other side of Delenn's single candle with three bottles and a shot glass in her hand.

  


*

  



End file.
